Young Successful Entrepreneur

I was in the client kickoff call with the Director of SEO and Director of PPC.  After an effective 30-minute conference call, the client asks THE question that will set ALL campaign expectations:

“When should we schedule our weekly meetings to discuss the campaign progress?”

Director of SEO: “Best times for me are Tuesdays or Thursdays before 11am PST”

Director of PPC: “Same here”

Me (Director of Social Media): “My team does not schedule weekly meetings with our clients; instead, our Account Managers send weekly reports at the end of each week.  We will however schedule a monthly campaign strategy call to make sure the campaign is on track and we are hitting our success metrics.”

… a pause…

The client: “Sounds good.  Please email me best times to meet on a monthly basis and we’ll coordinate appropriately.  [Directed to the Director of SEO and of PPC] We’ll meet Thursdays at 10am PST for our weekly call.”

[hangs up phone]

All three departments sat on the same call.

All three departments are expected to hit their target goals.

However, SEO and PPC must take 1 hour each week to meet with the client.  Social Media, on the other hand, only needs to take 1 hour each month to meet with the client.

Read more to learn how to discipline your clients in order to run an effective machine called “work”

Keep in Mind

I’m the Director of Social Media and President of SocialMediaMarketing.com.  I have decision-making power and am completely in charge of what my team does and doesn’t do.

With that said, the following advice applies if you are:

1. The founder of your startup company
2. A Director or Manager at a small agency
3. Dealing w/ clients that pay $10,000/month or less

The following advice does not apply to you if you are:

1. In an entry-level position
2. At a large, enterprise level company with established client-interaction systems and operations
3. Dealing w/ clients that pay more than $10,000/month

Discipline your clients

All clients care about is ROI. If you show that you are producing results and making the client money, then the client will be happy and leave you alone.

This post would completely suck if I advised you to “do good work.”  I’ll assume good work as a given; instead, this post will focus on setting expectations, delivery of information, and phone call rejection to email strategy.

Setting Expectations

From the very beginning, you need to push for 1 conference call a month and weekly report summaries of work.  Tell the client that you do this with all clients throughout many different industries and there has never been a problem.

What if the client pushes hard to have a call once a week?

If the client continues to push for weekly phone calls, explain that you would like to start off with 1 conference call per month for the first two months.  If during the two months the client is not satisfied with the work that your team produces, you will gladly transition to 1 conference call per week.

Don’t be weak and don’t let the client beat you.  You must discipline the client and make sure they understand the way in which this business relationship will work.  You are dictator who has been hired to help the client make more money; they need to let you do your job and produce the results in the way that you work most effectively.

Results expectations must be clearly documented and written in the agreement

The contract that the client signs must contain a complete time-line and breakdown of the delivery of services.  The client needs to know that within 2 weeks, the blog will be designed and developed; the client needs to know that in 4 weeks, your team will launch a sweepstakes on Facebook.

If the client knows what to expect and when to expect it, then the client will feel like they know exactly what you’re working on every week.

Delivery of Information

The key element for this to work is to deliver weekly reports every week consistently. This is the system that I have built:

1. I built a template for weekly reports that simply requires my Account Manager to copy and paste information into it
2. I created a document on PB Works that teaches the Account Manager how to use my weekly reports template
3. The Account Manager is instructed to email the client the weekly report every Friday end of day
4. Campaign recommendations and analysis is saved for monthly reports because they require more time to build

Note: We’re in the process of training an intern to build our weekly reports for us

Phone call rejection to email strategy

Client: “Jun, I’d like to get on a phone call to discuss a few questions I have about the campaign.”

Me: “This week is booked for me. Please send your questions to the Account Manager and CC me and we’ll make sure to answer your questions thoroughly via email.

Client: “Jun, my questions can only be addressed over the phone.  Is there any way that we can squeeze a 15 minute call somewhere?”

Important: Calls are never 15 minutes.  If you give them a phone call once, they’ll expect you to give it to them from here on out.

Me: “I just don’t have the time this week.  Send me your questions via email and I’ll make sure that the Account Manager thoroughly answers your questions to the detail.  If his answers are unsatisfactory, I’ll hop on a call with you first thing next week.”

Does this really work with clients?

Yes, it really does.

Aren’t you afraid of losing the client?

If you are hitting your goals and making the client money, then the client will not leave you.  It’s really as simple as that.

-

Now you know how to discipline your clients.  Take these powers with you and begin freeing up your time from mind-numbing client interaction.